WASHINGTON — A divided Congress has no clear path to heed the call of Chief Justice John Roberts and President Obama to legislate in response to Tuesday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a portion of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Reaction on Capitol Hill largely mirrored the court's ideological divide: Democrats called for legislation to establish new formulas to determine whether states must get federal permission before instituting changes in voting practices, while Republicans were more reticent on the necessity to pass a new law.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he would convene hearings next month to see what legislative recourse Congress can take. Leahy made clear his displeasure with the Supreme Court's action to invalidate a law most recently reauthorized in 2006 with broad bipartisan support.

"The Supreme Court listened to an hour's argument and decided they knew better than the hundreds of members of Congress who struggled and worked over this and passed it," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he supported Leahy's efforts. "There's general displeasure — and that's an understatement — in my caucus about what the Supreme Court did," Reid said, calling it "a dark day" for the Supreme Court.

"I think it's incumbent upon the leadership of the House and the Senate to come together to consider what can be done, what should be done and what is practical to be done," said House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., but he acknowledged that the political climate is hostile toward compromise on contentious issues. "The Congress has not been very able to act in a bipartisan fashion. That is unfortunate."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the Voting Rights Act "an important bill that passed back in the '60s at a time when we had a very different America than we have today." McConnell declined to comment on what, if any, action Congress should take in response to the ruling.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Voting Rights Act, voiced support for the decision as more reflective of today's civil rights protections.

"I don't know what would be needed after this. If anybody discriminates against voters in Alabama because of the color of their skin, they will go to jail if there's any proof to that. That wasn't so in 1965," he said.

"The world has changed since 1965," he said. "It was raw discrimination in 1965. Whole hundreds of thousands of African Americans were flatly denied the right to vote because of the color of their skin, and that's why the act passed, and it has been pretty darn successful."

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who represents one of the states that has been subject to Justice Department oversight under the law, said he believed Congress should examine possible responses to the decision, but he echoed the concerns that there is no broad consensus for action.

Isakson said the "right to vote is fundamental, and Congress, if it has any other obligations to its constituents, it's to protect their rights in every way that they can," he said, "It's incumbent upon us to do so; whether we'll do it or not is another question."

Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., criticized the court but was likewise pessimistic that Congress can respond. "With the House being pretty hostile to expanding voting rights, it's going to be pretty difficult," he said. "This so-called conservative court once again is activist and taking rights in the wrong direction."

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights icon, said the commemoration in August of Martin Luther King's march on Washington should be used as a catalyst for pressuring Congress to act. "The American people should use the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington and other opportunities to say we still need Voting Act protections in our country," Lewis said. "We must do it now before another national election takes place."